Jesus could not come forward as a prophetprophet-e.g. like John-because the prophet always points to one higher than himself, and thereby assigns a provisional character to himself, while Jesus knew Himself to be God's final messenger, after whom none higher can come. That is the decisive consideration. The superhuman self-consciousness of Jesus, which knows nothing higher than itself save God and can expect none other, could find satisfactory expression in no other form but that of the Messianic idea. That which weighs with Jesus in accepting this idea is not its political but its final and conclusive character.

This last consideration has brought us face to face with the question as to the origin of the Messianic consciousness. It is, however, only honest to confess that this origin is a mystery for us: we know nothing about it. All that we can say is how this consciousness did not arise in Jesus. It was not through slowly matured reflections of an intellectual nature: such are never the basis of certainty. The self-consciousness of a clever theologian might possibly thus be accounted for, but not that of the Son of God. Nor, again, was it owing to the influence of His surroundings; the voices of demons and of the world might make a man of genius vacillate: they could never impart a divine certainty to him. The fact, too, that Jesus appears from the very first with unswerving constancy and immovable certainty as one sent by God causes us to abandon both explanations. There is nowhere any hesitation, or doubt, or development from presentiments to certainty. Jesus learns new things as to the manner of His calling, but never anything fresh as to the fact itself. He acts

His whole life long under the stress of compulsion. He knows Himself sent, nay, driven by God. He has only one choice: to obey or to disobey.

The Gospels date the Messianic consciousness of Jesus from the Baptism. He saw the Spirit of God descending in the fashion of a dove, and heard a voice, "Thou art My Son." The great Old Testament prophets were, it is true, called in visions, and St Paul became a Christian and an apostle by means of a vision. So far the evidence is in favour of the evangelists' story. But there is one consideration which should weigh very strongly in the contrary direction. The strange occurrence at the Baptism could have been told the disciples by none other than by Jesus Himself. If Jesus told them, then it could only be for the purpose of obtaining authority for His mission. But Jesus never appealed to visions. That is just His great distinction, His immense advantage over Mahomet. The whole edifice of Mahomet's self-consciousness falls to pieces as soon as the truth of his visions is questioned. But in Jesus' case you may cut out the story of the Baptism and of the Transfiguration and everything remains the same. All the outer processes which served the Old Testament prophets as means of communication with God, fall into disuse when we come to Jesus. is just what constitutes His greatness. The consciousness of His call does not depend upon voices and visions, which everyone who has not himself experienced them is at liberty to doubt, but simply upon inner compulsion. How this compulsion came upon Him, whether it was in the end connected with some visionary experience, that is not for us to know.

That

And

after all, the important matter is not that Jesus had some experience of an especial nature with God, but that this experience compelled Him to turn to men. The historian who contents himself with this observes thereby the reverence that is due to this mystery.

But then, on the other hand, the inadequacy of the Messianic idea for Jesus Himself is likewise clear. Besides the one thought, the Messiah is God's last messenger, nothing but Jewish narrowness was connoted by this title. Happily Jesus is something else, something greater than the Messiah of the Jews. The traces are still preserved in the gospel tradition of the wrestling of Jesus with the inadequacy of the idea, of His labouring with the conception till finally its contents were completely transformed.

It is the story of the Temptation that shows us first of all that there is a complete want of inner harmony between Jesus and the Messianic idea. This story signifies the breach of Jesus with all that is fanciful and politically dangerous in the conception of the Messiah. The Messiah is a miraculous being who can do everything. Is Jesus to depend upon this, and thereby win over the people? The Messiah is a king of this world who attains to his dominion by force, deceit, treachery and cunning, just like other kings here on earth. Shall Jesus gain the sovereignty of the world by these means? No, He cries; it is the voice of Satan which is thus appealing to My feelings as Messiah. Away with it. In so doing He had already won the victory over that which presented the greatest danger in the conception of the Messiah, and had subjected Himself in obedient faith to God.

But what next? The Messiah of the Zealots had been cast aside. There remained the Messiah of the Rabbis. According to the true dogma, the Messiah was to remain concealed somewhere or other, perhaps in the desert, until God exalted Him on His throne. That is to say, He was to do nothing and wait for the miracle to be wrought. But Jesus returned from the desert back into the world, in order to help men and prepare them for the Messianic time. He did not wait, but went about doing good. All the great

redemptive activity of Jesus has no place in the Jewish conception of the Messiah; or, in other words, that which is great in Jesus from the point of view of the history of the world, is not a consequence of the idea of the Messiah, but is an original addition of His own.

'Messiah' and 'Israel' are two ideas that are inseparably connected together in the Jewish mind. The Messiah is Israel's future king-that and nothing else. Jesus, too, remained faithful to this dogma, and confined His activity during the whole of His life to His own people. But through bitter and grievous deception He had to learn that Israel as a whole was not receptive: that it would not accept the message, and that it was blindly hurrying along the road that led to judgment. At the same time, glimpses that open out into the heathen world fill Him with hope. And so He resigns Himself to be, if God so wills it, the Messiah whom Israel rejects and the Gentiles accept. Thereby all that is merely national is almost entirely banished from the idea of the Messiah. It is turned into the formal conception of king; judged by its contents, it becomes a paradox.

In the Jewish fancy Messiah is surrounded by all manner of heavenly and earthly glory. David's fame is reflected upon him. But the bitter experience that Jesus has gained in His dealings with His people causes the thought of the necessity of suffering, and even of death, to ripen in His soul. From the day at Cæsarea Philippi onwards He begins to familiarize the minds of the disciples with it, and utilizes the very occasion when their enthusiasm bursts into flame, to give them their first solemn lesson.

The thought of death was the stumbling-block to the Jews; it was the simple negation of the Messiah. No Jew before Jesus ever applied Isa. liii. to the dying Messiah. By thus submitting to this new necessity Jesus completed the purification of an idea which was at first by no means pure. The Messianic glory now becomes an object to be aimed at, not one which falls into the lap of some privileged person by some exceptional piece of good fortune, but one which has to be obtained through endless labour and renunciation: yea, even by death itself in voluntary obedience.

Thus did Jesus after much labour purify the title of Messiah which He had at first assumed through an inner compulsion. Even for us after all these centuries there is something surprisingly grand as we observe how the idea is emptied of all the merely sensual and selfish elements, so that finally the king in all his pomp and glory is turned into the tragic figure on the Cross. Herein, in one word, consists Jesus' greatness. He introduces the tragic element where others joyously revelled in material Utopias.

But the end of this work is no renunciation of